Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 09

by Damned in Paradise (v5. 0)

  “When your husband returned home, did you tell him what these men had done to you?”

  “Not at first. I couldn’t. It was too awful, too horrible. But he sat with me on this couch and kept asking. He knew something was terribly wrong. Even though I’d cleaned myself up, my face was all bruised and puffy; my nose was bleeding. He begged me to tell him.”

  “And you did?”

  She nodded. “I told him everything—how they’d raped me. How Kahahawai broke my jaw when I tried to pray. How all of them attacked me….”

  “I understand your husband called the police, took you to the hospital…”

  “Yes. Eventually I identified four of the five boys, who’d been picked up on another assault that same night.”

  Darrow gently inquired about the ordeal that had followed, the weeks of medical treatment (teeth pulled, jaw wired shut), the “travesty” of the trial of the five rapists that had resulted in a hung jury, the flurry of press interest, the racial unrest manifested by several incidents between Navy personnel and local island youth.

  “The worst part was the rumors,” she said hollowly. “I heard Tommie hadn’t believed me and was getting a divorce. That I was assaulted by a naval officer and that Tommie found him in my room and beat him and then beat me up…all kinds of vile, nasty rumors.”

  “How did your husband withstand these pressures, dear?”

  “I told him not to worry about these rumors, but he couldn’t sleep and he got so very thin. Then I would wake up at night, screaming, and he would be right there, soothing me. He was so wonderful. But I was worried.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t sleep, he had rings around his eyes, he’d get up at night and walk up and down the living room, smoking cigarettes.”

  “And your mother—all of this was very difficult for her, obviously.”

  “Yes. When she arrived from Bayport, in response to the first cablegram that I’d been injured, she didn’t even know about the…true nature of what had happened to me. She was outraged, indignant, vowed to do whatever it took to help.”

  “How did that help manifest itself, dear?”

  “Well, at first, she took over the household duties—Tommie had been acting as both housekeeper and my nurse, in addition to his normal naval duties.”

  “But that wasn’t all she did, was it?”

  “No. Mother was relentless in urging both Admiral Stirling and the local civil authorities to see that my attackers were brought to trial, and punished.”

  “She wasn’t living with you,” I said, “when…”

  “No,” she interrupted. “No. When I got up and around, and was feeling better, this little house was just too small for all of us. My younger sister, Helene, was with her…Helene’s since gone back to Long Island, to be with my father, who was too ill to travel here…and Mother rented a place of her own.”

  Leisure spoke, for the first time since the interrogation had begun. “Did you have any part in the abduction of Joseph Kahahawai, Mrs. Massie?”

  Thalia looked at him sharply. “None! The first I knew anything of it was when Seaman Jones came to my door, the morning of the incident.”

  “Before or after the killing?” I asked.

  “After! He rushed in and handed me a gun and said, ‘Here, take this—Kahahawai has been killed.’ And I said, ‘Where’s Tommie?’ And he said he’d sent Tommie off with Mother to…to dispose of the body.”

  And she just sat there impassively, with no more expression on her face than a bisque baby’s.

  “Then what did this seaman do?” Darrow asked.

  “He asked me to make him a drink, a highball. And I did.”

  “A man had been killed, Mrs. Massie,” I said. “By your husband and your mother.”

  “I’m sorry the man was shot,” she said, and shrugged. “But it was no more than he deserved.”

  Then she apologized for her “earlier rudeness” and asked if we’d like anything to drink. Her maid had made a pitcher of iced tea, if anyone was interested.

  “Beatrice!” she called.

  And the pretty, efficient little maid came in with a pitcher of tea with floating lemons and a tray of glasses.

  “You know,” Thalia said, “I sometimes wonder why they didn’t just kill me—it would have been so much easier for all concerned, in the long run…. I hope you like your tea sweetened, in the Southern style.”

  5

  Isabel needed some fresh air, so we stepped outside while Darrow chatted with Thalia Massie—nothing directly to do with the case, just small talk about naval life at Pearl and her experiences taking courses at the University of Hawaii, even garnering recommendations from her about restaurants in Honolulu. Darrow liked to make his clients feel comfortable with him, think of him as a friend.

  And while Thalia wasn’t exactly a client, her role in this case was crucial. Darrow was turning on his charm, his warmth, on this apparently cold-blooded girl.

  “How’s Thalo doing?” Pop Olds asked. The lieutenant was sitting on the steps of the front stoop, several ground-out cigarette butts on the sidewalk nearby.

  “All right I think,” I said. “Hard to tell—she’s a very self-contained young woman.”

  Olds got to his feet, shook his head. “Hard on her, out here. She gets pretty lonely.”

  “Isn’t she spending any time with her husband?” I asked. “I understand he and the others are in custody of the Navy, not the local coppers. Can’t she get access to him?”

  “Oh, yes,” Olds said. “That part of it’s fine, anyway. Tommie and Mrs. Fortescue and the two sailors are on the U.S.S. Alton.”

  I frowned. “What, out at sea?”

  He chuckled. “No. It’s an old warship stuck in the mud in the harbor. It’s used as temporary living quarters for transient personnel.”

  “I don’t think this is healthy,” I said, “her being stuck out here in seclusion. She puts up a hell of a front, but…”

  Isabel hugged my arm. “Maybe she’ll be better with me around.”

  “Maybe. The last thing we need is our chief witness committing suicide.”

  Isabel drew in a fast breath. “Suicide…”

  “I’ve had some experience in that area,” I said. “She needs some company. Some companionship.”

  “Well,” Olds said thoughtfully, “the ammunition depot’s located on a little island in the middle of the harbor, and that’s where my quarters are. My wife and I have one of the few houses on base.”

  “Do you have room for Thalia?” I asked.

  “Certainly. I’m not sure we could accommodate Miss Bell, here, as well….”

  I patted Isabel’s hand. “I think Mr. Darrow could arrange housing for Miss Bell at the Royal Hawaiian.”

  Isabel kept her face troubled, but she was hugging my arm enthusiastically now. “Well,” she said, trying to sound disappointed, “I really would like to be at Thalo’s side, through this…”

  “You’d be welcome at Pearl, anytime,” Olds said. “You could spend every day with your cousin, if you like. You’d just have to find someplace else to sleep.”

  “We can manage that,” I said with a straight face. “I’ll run this idea past Mr. Darrow, and let you know before we leave.”

  Darrow was delighted by the suggestion, and Thalia liked the idea, too. Pop Olds said he’d put the plan in motion—Admiral Stirling was sure to give his okay—but for the time being, Isabel would stay behind with Thalia. This was where Isabel’s belongings were being delivered.

  She walked me to the limo, where the Navy driver was helping Darrow back in. The breeze was wafting her lovely haze of blond hair. Her arm in mine, she pulled me down, leaned in, her lips almost touching my ear.

  “I can’t decide whether you’re wonderful or terrible,” she whispered.

  “No one can,” I whispered back. “That’s my charm.”

  In the limousine, I said, “Where to now, C.D.?”

  “Pearl Harbor,” he said, “to meet o
ur clients.”

  “Might I make a suggestion?”

  Darrow looked toward Leisure, who was sitting beside me in the roomy back of the limo. “You’ve probably noticed, George, this boy is not shy about making his thoughts known.”

  Leisure gave me a sideways smile. “I’ve noticed that. And I respect it. We three have a considerable challenge ahead, and I don’t believe we should hold anything back.”

  “Agreed,” Darrow said. “What’s your suggestion, Nate?”

  “Let’s make a slight detour. Mrs. Fortescue’s rented bungalow is only a few blocks from here. We probably won’t be able to get in, but let’s at least have a look at the outside of it.”

  Less than three blocks away, just one house off the East Manoa Road intersection, on Kolowalu Street, was a nondescript, even dingy little white frame number, a charmless cottage set back amid some scroungy trees with untended hedges along the side. With its intersecting pitched roofs, it was like a parody of the Massies’ little dream house. The yard was slightly overgrown, making it a mild eyesore in this modestly residential section.

  No question about it: if you had to pick a house on this street where a murder might have happened, this was the place.

  The Navy driver parked the limo across the way, and we got out, crossed the quiet street, and had a look around.

  Darrow, hands on hips, was studying the bungalow like a doctor looks at an X-ray. He stood ankle-deep in the gently riffling grass, like an oversize lawn ornament.

  “Wonder if it’s been rented out yet,” Leisure said.

  “Sure doesn’t look like it,” I said. “Unless Bela Lugosi moved in…. But I’ll find a neighbor to ask.”

  The haole housewife next door stopped her vacuuming to come to the door. She was an attractive brunette in a blue housedress, hair pinned up under an island-print kerchief; she thought I was cute, too. She wiped some perspiration from her upper lip and answered my questions.

  No, it hadn’t been rented, the place was still empty. The real estate agent was starting to show it, though. They’d left a key with her, if I was interested….

  I came back grinning, my prize dangling from a key chain.

  Soon we were inside the little place, and it was little: only four rooms and bath—living room, kitchen, two small bedrooms. More rental furniture, but of a lower quality than at the Massies’; not a framed picture on the walls, not a knickknack in sight. No radio, no phonograph. Dusty as hell, and only the crusty dried remains of two fried eggs in a skillet on the stove, and a place setting for two at the kitchen table, indicated anyone had ever lived here at all.

  The rust-colored outline of bloodstains in the master bedroom indicated somebody had died here, however. Odd-shaped stains on the wooden floor, like maps of unchartered islands…

  The bathroom was spotless—including the tub where the body of Joseph Kahahawai had been dumped for cleaning and wrapping purposes.

  “Mrs. Fortescue didn’t live here,” Leisure said from the bathroom doorway as I studied the gleaming bathtub.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “She just stayed here. Like you stay in a hotel room. I don’t think there’s anything for us to learn in this place.”

  “Do you see anything useful, son?” Darrow asked me, from the cramped hall.

  “No. But I smell something.”

  Darrow’s brow furrowed in curiosity. Leisure was studying me, too.

  “Death,” I said, answering the question in their eyes. “A man was murdered here.”

  “Let’s not use that word, son—‘murder.’”

  “Executed, then. Hey, I’m all for getting our clients off. But, gentlemen—let’s never forget the smell of this place. How it makes your goddamn skin crawl.”

  “Nate’s right,” Leisure said. “This is no vacation. A man died, here.”

  “Point well taken,” Darrow said, his voice hushed, somber.

  The seven-mile stretch that separated Honolulu from the naval base at Pearl Harbor was a well-paved boulevard bordered by walls of deep red sugarcane stalks on either side. The breeze rustled the cane field, making shimmering music.

  “I like Thalia,” Darrow said, after a long interval of silence. “She’s a clever, attractive, unassuming young woman.”

  “She’s awfully unemotional,” Leisure said.

  “She’s still in a state of shock,” Darrow said dismissively.

  Leisure frowned. “Seven months after the fact?”

  “Then call it a state of detachment. It’s her way of dealing with tragedy, protecting herself; she’s erected a kind of wall. But she spoke the truth. I can always tell when a client’s lying to me.”

  “Two things bother me,” I said.

  Darrow’s brow furrowed. “What would those be?”

  “She kept describing herself as ‘dazed,’ and painted a nightmarish picture…convincingly.”

  Darrow was nodding sagely.

  “But for a woman in a daze,” I said, “she noted a hell of a lot of details. She gave us everything but the laundry marks on their damn clothes.”

  “Perhaps the awful event is frozen in her memory,” Darrow offered.

  “Perhaps.”

  Leisure asked, “What’s the other thing that bothered you, Nate?”

  “It’s probably nothing. But she talked about her mother taking over the housekeeping for her…”

  “Yes,” Leisure said.

  “And that when she got back on her feet, the place was suddenly too small for them, and Thalia could handle the housekeeping herself again, so her mother moved out.”

  Darrow was listening intently.

  “Only in the meantime,” I continued, “housekeeper Thalia’s taken on a full-time maid.”

  “If there’s room for the maid,” Leisure said, raising an eyebrow, “why not room for Mom?”

  I shrugged. “I just think relations between Thalia and her mother may be a little strained. Isabel told me Thalia practically raised herself, that her mother was never around. I don’t think they were ever close.”

  “Yet the mother faces a murder charge,” Darrow said, savoring the irony, “for defending her daughter’s honor.”

  “Yeah, funny, isn’t it? Let’s say they don’t get along—can’t be under the same roof together—then why does Mother Fortescue go out on this limb for her little girl?”

  “Maybe she was defending the family name,” Leisure suggested.

  “Or maybe Mrs. Fortescue feels guilty about neglecting her kid,” I said, “and cooked up a hell of a way to finally make it up to the girl.”

  “Mother and daughter needn’t love each other,” Darrow said patiently, as if instructing children, “for a mother’s instincts to take hold. Among many species, the mother forgets herself, in protecting the life of her offspring. It’s purely biological.”

  At Pearl Harbor Junction, our limousine bore straight ahead, pulling up to the entrance to the naval station, an innocuous white-picket gate between fieldstone posts in a mesh-wire fence that couldn’t have kept out a troop of Campfire Girls. Our driver checked in with the Marine MP there, who checked us off on a clipboard, and gave us admittance into a surprisingly shabby facility.

  Not that the Navy Yard didn’t have its impressive points. Like the immense battleship bed of the cement pit labeled DRYDOCK—14TH NAVAL DISTRICT; or the coaling station with wharf, railroad, and hoisting towers. Or Ford Island (as our driver identified it), with its seaplane station and battery of ungainly planes.

  But the wooden shacks labeled, variously, GYRO SHOP, ELECTRICAL SHOP, MESS HALL, DIESEL SHOP looked more like a rundown summer camp than a military base. Sheet-iron shelters housing sailors’ automobiles had a cheap, temporary look; and the submarine base, with what should have been a grand array, was a couple dozen tiny subs at a wobbly wooden network of finger piers.

  The fleet was definitely not in. No great warships loomed in the harbor. The only ship in sight was the Alton, perpetually stuck in the mud, aboard which o
ur clients were in custody.

  But our first stop was at the base headquarters, another unassuming white building, if better maintained. Our young Navy chauffeur was still our guide, and he led Darrow, Leisure, and me into a large waiting room. Venetian blinds on the many windows were letting in slashes of sunlight as men in white bustled in and out with paperwork; the chauffeur checked us in with the reception desk. We had barely sat down when an attaché pushed open a door and summoned us with, “Mr. Darrow? The admiral will see you now.”

  The office was spacious, its paneling light brown, masculine, touched here and there with an award or a plaque or a framed photograph; one wall, at our left as we entered, was taken up almost entirely by a map of the Pacific. Behind the admiral was a wall of windows with more blinds, but these were shut tight, letting no sun in at all; an American flag stood at ease, to the admiral’s right. His mahogany desk, appropriately enough, was as big as a boat, and it was shipshape: pens, papers, personal items, arranged as neatly as if prepared for inspection.

  The admiral was shipshape, too—a narrow blade of a man in his late fifties, standing behind the desk with one fist on a hip. In his white uniform with its high collar, epaulets, brass buttons, and campaign ribbons, he looked as perfectly groomed as a waiter in a really high-class joint.

  Pouches of skin slanting over grayish-blue eyes gave him a relaxed expression that I doubted; his weathered countenance was otherwise rather dour: prominent nose, long upper lip, lantern jaw. He was smiling. I doubted the smile, too.

  “Mr. Darrow, I can’t tell you how pleased I am,” the admiral said in a mellow voice gently touched by the South, “that Mrs. Fortescue took my advice and acquired your good services.”

  Second Navy man today who’d taken credit for that.

  “Admiral Stirling,” Darrow said, shaking the hand his host extended, “I want to thank you for your hospitality and help. May I introduce my staff?”

  Leisure and I shook hands with Admiral Yates Stirling, exchanged acknowledgments, and at the admiral’s signal took the three chairs opposite his desk. One of them, a leather padded captain’s chair, was clearly meant for Darrow, and he took it grandly.